Quote:
Originally Posted by bodaggin
That's 25-40GW of untapped, viable generation. On top of our current 6.5GW production. Private or public, it just needs building. Adding a private middle man, only to strangle them with regulation and hoops defeats the point.
Further. MB Hydro can become a Norwegian wealth fund style boon to Gov MB, capitalizing on the massive electric revolution. Publicly owned. It just needs to be properly managed. This is how MB gets off the $3-4B HST teet and becomes a HAVE province.
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What are you on? Which one of our neighbors that we currently export to is going to buy 25 to 40GW of electricity so we can start up our own so-called "Norwegian wealth fund"? Electricity exports are much different than oil, you can't just bottle it up and send it on a ship or pipeline half way across the world to where it is in demand. Electrical grids are a lot more complex and more expensive to run and maintain than a pipeline or fleet of oil tankers.
People act like if we just built more dams we could export all that electricity. If you aggregate all the generation and export data back to 2008, Manitoba's export receipts to the US and other provinces total 3.1% of total electricity generated here. Do you really think we'd be able to make our own "wealth fund" here in the province by just cranking up generation capacity and selling it? I don't think so, other jurisdictions also want to invest in generating their own electricity. And before people scream "yeah by hydro is GREEEEEEEN!" well, the US (our main buyer) is making great progress on renewable and green generating capacity, so it's sort of a moot point.
Don't get me wrong, our crown utility is an important piece of Manitoba's economy, and proper management will be important to sustain low electricity rates which will make us competitive for attracting business. But it is not, and never will be the silver bullet to making us a "have" province. We will never export enough electricity to make some sort of imagined "sovereign wealth fund" that other oil-exporting countries have the privileged of enjoying.